Today we're pleased to announce that the next version of Flash Player, 11.2.202.228, is available for immediate download. This update includes the following new features:

Drivers gating for hardware acceleration relaxed — Previously, the hardware accelerated content was gated to 1/1/2009, however, we have relaxed the driver gating to 1/1/2008.Throttling event — This release introduces a new ThrottleEvent. A ThrottleEvent is now dispatched by the stage when the Flash Player throttles, pauses or resumes content.Mouse lock, relative mouse coordinates, right and middle click events — Create immersive, panoramic games with infinite scrolling to enable new classes of content, including first-person games.Multithreaded video decoding (Windows, Mac OS, and Linux) — The video decoding pipeline is now fully multithreaded. This feature should improve the overall performance on all platforms. Note that this feature is a significant architecture change required for other future improvements.Flash Player background updates (Windows) — New versions of the runtimes can now be delivered more effectively to the end user with this enhanced updating mechanism (Background update is only available in the release versions of Flash Player).

This beta release provides access to the Flash Player 11.2 runtime for Windows, Mac OS and Linux desktop environments. The key features and benefits of Flash Player 11.2 beta are:

Multi-threaded video decoding (Windows, Mac OS, and Linux) — The video decoding pipeline is now fully multi-threaded. This feature should improve the overall performance on all platforms. Note that this feature is a significant architecture change required for other future improvements.

Flash Player background updates (Windows) — New versions of the runtimes can now be delivered more effectively to the end user with this enhanced updating mechanism (Background update is only available in the release versions of Flash Player).

The Windows Release versions of Flash Player 11.2.202.18 contain the new Flash Player background update feature that we'd like you to test.Begin by running the installer for version 11.2.202.18 on your machine. After installing, the final panel of the installer gives you options for howFlash Player will provide you with future updates. Selecting "Automatically update me when possible" is the setting that will enable you to help uswith testing -- please choose that option. You can always change the choice you make by navigating to the Advanced tab in your Flash PlayerSettings Manager. To access the Flash Player Settings Manager, either right-click Flash content and select "Global Settings…", or find FlashPlayer in your Windows Control Panel.

Your system will check every hour for updates to Flash Player. We have posted Flash Player 11.2.202.19 as an update. It is essentially the samebuild as 11.2.202.18, but with an incremented version number. If you leave your system on for at least 4 hours, you should see these updatesapplied to your system -- both your ActiveX component and your plug-in will have been updated. To test this, you can open a new webpage withFlash content and right-click over the Flash content -- the bottom-most item in the context menu will have the version number in it. You should beupdated to version 11.2.202.19. Note that browser instances with Flash content that were loaded before the update was applied will not have theupdate.

During the background update, if Flash Player is updated while Firefox is in use, Firefox will continue to use the previous version. To fix this,either delete the previous version NPSWF.dll in \Windows[SysDir]\Macromed\Flash* (see note below) or restart the computer for Firefox to loadthe newly installed Plugin. If the Operating System is 64-bit, it may be necessary to remove the NPSWF .dll from both\Windows\System32\Macromed\Flash AND \Windows[SysWow64]\Macromed\Flash directories.

Note that for security reasons, the Flash Player background updater will update all Flash Player versions (10.1 and above) installed on yourconfiguration (plugins, ActiveX).

During the background update, on Windows 7 x64, if Flash Player is updated while Internet Explorer is running, an Internet Explorer SecurityWarning dialog will display if the browser is refreshed to load the newly installed version. To avoid this, restart the browser to load the newlyinstalled ActiveX Control.

Please use this the Flash Player 11.2 forums to let us know how this feature works for you. We'd like to hear about success as well as problems,so a post simply saying "AX & Plug-in updated to 11.2.202.19" is very valuable information to us, as are any errors or problems you may run into.

The current Incubator release provides access to Flash Player Protected Mode for Mozilla Firefox on Windows 7 and Windows Vista systems.

Flash Player Protected Mode is a new security enhancement designed to limit the impact of attacks launched from malicious SWF files against Flash Player when running in Firefox on Windows Vista and higher. We are working aggressively to make Flash Player more secure, and Protected Mode is a critical component in our strategy. The current beta targets Windows desktop operating systems. We are working to extend similar protections to other browsers in the future.

This preview release is designed for evaluation purposes only. We do not recommended that this release be used on production systems or for any mission-critical work. The availability of AIR and Flash Player Incubator builds and supported OS and platforms may vary on the downloads page between updates to this program.

The Adobe® AIR® and Adobe Flash® Player Incubator is a technology preview program for more adventurous developers who are willing to experiment with Flash Platform runtime features that are in early development stages. Test the bleeding-edge capabilities of runtimes and contribute to the future of the Flash Platform. Please note that the capabilities in the Incubator builds may or may not be supported in future releases of the runtimes.

These vulnerabilities could cause a crash and potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system. This update also resolves a universal cross-site scripting vulnerability that could be used to take actions on a user's behalf on any website or webmail provider, if the user visits a malicious website. There are reports that this vulnerability (CVE-2012-0767) is being exploited in the wild in active targeted attacks designed to trick the user into clicking on a malicious link delivered in an email message (Internet Explorer on Windows only).

These priority 2 updates address critical vulnerabilities in Adobe Flash Player 11.1.102.62 and earlier versions for Windows, Macintosh, Linux and Solaris, Adobe Flash Player 11.1.115.6 and earlier versions for Android 4.x, and Adobe Flash Player 11.1.111.6 and earlier versions for Android 3.x and 2.x. These vulnerabilities could cause a crash and potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system.

Adobe recommends users of Adobe Flash Player 11.1.102.62 and earlier versions for Windows, Macintosh, Linux and Solaris update to Adobe Flash Player 11.1.102.63. Users of Adobe Flash Player 11.1.115.6 and earlier versions on Android 4.x devices should update to Adobe Flash Player 11.1.115.7. Users of Adobe Flash Player 11.1.111.6 and earlier versions for Android 3.x and earlier versions should update to Flash Player 11.1.111.7.

Today we're pleased to announce that the next version of Flash Player, 11.2.202.228, is available for immediate download. This update includes the following new features:

Drivers gating for hardware acceleration relaxed — Previously, the hardware accelerated content was gated to 1/1/2009, however, we have relaxed the driver gating to 1/1/2008.Throttling event — This release introduces a new ThrottleEvent. A ThrottleEvent is now dispatched by the stage when the Flash Player throttles, pauses or resumes content.Mouse lock, relative mouse coordinates, right and middle click events — Create immersive, panoramic games with infinite scrolling to enable new classes of content, including first-person games.Multithreaded video decoding (Windows, Mac OS, and Linux) — The video decoding pipeline is now fully multithreaded. This feature should improve the overall performance on all platforms. Note that this feature is a significant architecture change required for other future improvements.Flash Player background updates (Windows) — New versions of the runtimes can now be delivered more effectively to the end user with this enhanced updating mechanism (Background update is only available in the release versions of Flash Player).